Microsoft says Do Not Track will stay on by default

Microsoft won’t cave in to pressure and change the Do Not Track default in Internet Explorer 10, says executive VP of legal and corporate affairs Brad Smith. Microsoft ruffled feathers in the online advertising world by turning on the privacy protection feature in IE10’s express settings. Advertisers weren’t alone, either. Both Mozilla and Apache voiced their displeasure with Microsoft’s move, and Apache announced that it would refuse to recognize Microsoft’s setting unless the company changed its decision about DNT.

According to Smith, however, Microsoft has “no intention of going back and have no intention of engaging in discussion on that possibility.” Microsoft has been willing to discuss certain aspects, like the way Do Not Track is described to users and simplifying the process of turning the setting off. Microsoft’s stance from day one has been to protect users first and allow them to opt in if they see enough benefit in enabling the type of tracking DNT would prevent. Nearly everyone else in the discussion says that DNT means nothing if a user doesn’t make a conscious choice to enable it — which is exactly what really happens during the Internet Explorer 10 setup. It’s hardly Microsoft’s fault if a user blindly clicks next and agrees to default settings.

In October, 75% of respondents to a Microsoft survey said they felt Do Not Track should be turned on by default. That’s all well and good, but the Association of National Advertisers says that “the Internet is funded by [advertising]” and that DNT by default will “undermine American innovation and leadership in the Internet economy.”

At this point, Do Not Track remains almost totally useless. Many advertisers have said they’ll ignore the beacon if it comes from Internet Explorer. Any server that runs Apache will ignore your IE setting, even if you’ve disabled it at first run and manually enabled it later (a conscious decision on your part). Beyond that, the average user is unlikely to take the initiative to hunt down the toggle in Firefox, Opera, or Chrome — no browser really makes a big deal about describing what DNT is, why you’d want to use it, and how you go about turning it on. More savvy users have already been using privacy protection add-ons (many of which go way beyond what DNT offers) for years, and for them there’s no added incentive to use Do Not Track.